Sacred Heart Parish

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31st SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (C)

  1. The November Sunday Liturgies begin to mark the end of the Liturgical Year. Thus the ending of the liturgical year becomes a fitting symbol of our own end-time and a symbol of the world’s end-time. On Monday, we will celebrate the Feast of All Saints and on Tuesday, the Feast of All Souls. These feasts excellently help us to gain a Christian perspective on all the big questions that truly matter – where have we come from, why are we here, why is there evil, why is there death, what is our ultimate destiny in history, how does this ultimate goal enable us to make important decisions on our more immediate goals? Around All Souls time, I often think of a parish priest whom I greatly admired. He had a distinguished chaplaincy record in World War II. He seemed to be a prayerful and skillful pastor. Sadly he was diagnosed as having cancer. He said to his parishioners – I came to the parish to minister among you so that we could together wrestle with the question, "How does the Christian learn to live so as to make a Gospel difference as a pilgrim citizen of this world?" In light of his illness, he later said, "We must ask together now a second question – How does the Christian learn to die?" November in our northern hemisphere is a good time to touch on this question. My thesis is neither new nor complex. The Christian learns how to die by learning how to live, and the Christian learns how to live by learning how to love – that is – how to follow Christ, do the truth in love, be in daily converse with God, live the sacramental life of the Church, strive always to grow in love of God and neighbor, seek to be ever-conscious of the social dimensions of faith, ever-learning to trust in God’s promise of eternal life.

  2. Notice what St. Paul’s says to the Thessalonians in our second reading today. It seems that some in the Thessalonica community were expecting an early return of the risen Christ. Accordingly, there was some misunderstanding about the Church’s teachings on death and the post-death condition of loved ones who had already died prior to the Lord’s second coming. Paul writes – We ask you, brothers and sisters, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him, “not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly or to be alarmed by any oral statements or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is coming”. Paul is thinking here of the mystery of faith – Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. He does not want the Thessalonians, in the face of death, to grieve as those who have no hope. We should note – Paul is not saying to the Thessalonians that the end-time will come in their lifetime, nor is he saying that the end-time will not come in their lifetime. Rather, he is expressing the faith of the church that Christ’s coming I s always imminent. This means that our deaths are always imminent. At some particular time each one of us will die; at any given moment each one of us could die.

  3. For a modest reflection on death, we will begin with the English poet John Donne. In a soliloquy to death he writes:

    Death, be not proud, tho some have called thee
    Mighty and dreadful, but thou art not so;
    For those whom thou thinkest thou doest overthrow
    Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

    These lines are quintessentially Christian. Some folk may view things by saying – First we live and then we die. The Christian says – First we die, and then we live and the life we live has a name. We call it life in Christ, life in the Spirit, or quite simply everlasting life. We who follow the Lord focus on his death with the realization that our dying gets its meaning from Christ’s dying. The Sacrament of Baptism is the sacrament of the Lord’s dying and rising for the world’s salvation. The sacrament of Baptism is also the sacrament of our dying in and with the Lord for our salvation. The Lord’s death on the cross was physical such as is our dying at our end-time. In Baptism we die sacramentally; we die to sin and inordinate self-love, so as to live for God and neighbor under the grace of the Holy Spirit. This work of Baptism is then strengthen by Confirmation and is continued throughout our lives in and through the Sacrament of the Eucharist wherein the Christian celebrates the Lord’s death and his or her own death in the Lord until the Lord comes again in glory.

  4. So many in our culture experience unease and disquiet in the face of such questions as – Is there really anything after death? Does anything remain of us after death? Is it nothingness that is before us? The Church’s responses are loud and clear. The Church believes in the resurrection of the dead. The Church understands this as nothing other than the extension to ourselves of what has already taken place in Christ. The Church affirms that the spiritual element of the human person survives and subsists after death – to be reunited with the body on the last day. To designate this element the Church makes use of the word – the soul, which is the principle of life. In fidelity to the New Testament the Church believes in the happiness of the just who are with Christ. The Church believes there will be eternal punishment for those truly unrepentant at death. The Church believes in the possibility of a purification of the just before they see God. Neither scripture nor theology provides sufficient light for an adequate picture of life after death. Christians should hold firm to two essential points. They should believe in the fundamental continuity – thanks to the Holy Spirit – between the life of grace and the life of glory. In other words heaven is grace gone home. On the other hand, Christians must be aware of the radical break between our present life and our future life. Eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for us. All we know is that we will be with God and become like God and praise God forever through Christ from whom all good things come.

  5. One final thought. At every Eucharist we celebrate the Mystery of Faith. We profess this Mystery of Faith in our Creed. We live this mystery when the Holy Spirit fashions our Gospel lifestyle and helps us to grow in the likeness of the risen Christ. This calls for a vital personal relationship with God which we call prayer, that surge of the heart, that simple look turned toward heaven, that cry of recognition and love embracing both trial and joy. I often ask myself this question – Will God really recognize me at my end-time if God and I have not been in prayerful communion prior to my end-time?